tau have more use for detection ability's but that doesnt mean they need more, chaos also doesnt have blindfire skillsand kiting needs as much of an eye on what you are kiting as kited needs to spot the kiter, really has no differencemore detection would make homing torps just annoying

also tau dont have 400% crit chance they have 400% chance to crit the part you are targeting, so if you dont target a system it does nothing

on the other hand tau have better boarding defense then nurgle, and that can get even better as the game goes onthat is kinda brokeneither nurgle needs to be buffed again or tau boarding defence needs a good long look at

Aquilar wrote:The Manta's don't get an extra hit point despite being heavily armed, armoured and shielded and being twice the size of a thunderhawk.

Nerfing the XV-46 upgrade is to stop the ridiculousness of what the Custodian is capable of. If all those Mantas make it through and very likely quite a few will, the amount of havoc they reek on the target ship is insane, it can easily one shot a light cruiser or heavily cripple everything else. The fire caste favour makes it especially deadly.

As for boarding, Tau can add a pretty epic amount of boarding protection and capable of having innately better boarding than most factions without having to spend a favour to do it. Mont'Ka has 400% critical hit chance to targeted systems for BOTH weapons batteries AND boarding actions along with a -5 to troop strength, the fire caste favour makes this even worse with the automatic fire crit. For a faction doesn't like being in close range they sure have a lot of stuff make boarding worth while.

The Custodian is highly over priced compared to everyone else's battleships, it certainly doesn't have the range and detection to compete with something like the emperor class as all it's power is in being a carrier, and it's weapon batteries are fairly mediocre in comparison.If the Custodian had a detection radius of 10k then it maybe worth being priced like it's TT version which costs 330, 420 with escorts.If you going to have a custodian in your fleet, your stuck with either a LC, 2 LCs, or an LC and a cruiser. where everyone else can (apart from spacemarines) can field a battleship and two battlecruisers and maybe an additional light cruiser. The Custodian and it's escort simple do not make up the difference, your outgunned and out skilled. This makes using the custodian without the air caste favour suicide.

You don't really get how a lot of this stuff works...

-Fire caste does not give mantas fire auto crit, only normal boardings, and only 1 per boarding use regardless of # of boarding actions (tested in beta).-Mont'ka 400% crit does not improve your actual crit chance. It increases the "weight" of the prioritized subsystem when rolling for critical. Note that normal increase for the selected subsystem is 200%. All SM ships have this trait by default too (called "surgical strike"). To illustrate: you have 30% crit chance and out of it 3% chance to crit deck. If you target deck you have 30% crit chance and 6% chance to crit deck (24% to crit smth else). If you do it with Mont'ka you have 30% cirt chance and 12% chance to crit deck (18% to crit smth else).

As for the fire caste favour/tau boarding protection. Fire caste favour is the weakest one out of the ones Tau have. Also, if you compare to Nurgle, 5+3/boading troop value is about the same as +10 really, it only starts to be better after the 2nd boarding and you'll rarely have battle last long enough to board more than 4 times. Fire automatic crit is also pretty weak and inferior to Nurgle's aoe. At best it's 90 damage every 60 seconds (unless it gets repaired) to a single ship, nurgle dot would do 180 damage in that time in aoe. And yes, you can push your boaring protection even further with ethereal + vespid helmet, getting +6 troop value for maxing a relatively useless crew member (you need pilots, cooldowns and crits) and an upgrade. Totally worthless. If I'd see a tau opponent with fire caste and vespid helmet I'd thank him for handicapping himself with a poor build.

Custodian is actually worth 289 points, since 3*37=111 you pay for 3 wardens you bring (dhows cost even more, but that costs you an upgrade). I'd say it's an ok price for a 6 launchbay ship. Escorts are not always useful though, so it would be nice if not bringing them was an option. I've played quite a few games with Custodian + dhows + protector + emissary with earth caste custodian, worked well most of the time.

Ashardalon wrote:tau have more use for detection ability's but that doesnt mean they need more, chaos also doesnt have blindfire skillsand kiting needs as much of an eye on what you are kiting as kited needs to spot the kiter, really has no differencemore detection would make homing torps just annoying

also tau dont have 400% crit chance they have 400% chance to crit the part you are targeting, so if you dont target a system it does nothing

on the other hand tau have better boarding defense then nurgle, and that can get even better as the game goes onthat is kinda brokeneither nurgle needs to be buffed again or tau boarding defence needs a good long look at

Stealth is generally more useful for long range/hit&run faction i.e. Chaos and Eldar. If you use stealth with a brawler fleet you're just avoiding damage. If you use stealth with a long range fleet you're killing your opponent without taking any damage in return. Btw I'm not saying Tau need more detection, but it's one of their weaknesses that can be used against them.

very true except possibly about the nurgle thing, i have already posted in the codex sages a question about fire warriors favor possibly counting for manta based boarding, allowing for extra fire to the manta and a bunch of extra troop value at 12kwhile nurgle aura does melt tau ships the boarding defense this can give is ridiculous vs SM or goffnow similar to you i have assumed that the fire warrior favor was the weakest but according to sir harris who uses a firewarrior ship in elite mode these effects do seem to trigger from manta boardingfurther testing or an answer from the devs is needed before i am fitting it on my pvp fleet but if it is the case that is a lot of defense they can getalso a boarding action is not one action even LC's do 2(or 3 i forget?) upping that fire damage and troop value by quite a bit more then you saidbut further testing is required

also stealth is also very powerful against a kiting or long range fleet, similar to how you cant hit them while stealth they cant hit you forcing them to close again and use more recon skills, even for brawling fleet it can be smart to stealth so that you dont suffer to much when closing in, only in brawler vs brawler does stealth lose its importance

MadDemiurg wrote:Custodian is actually worth 289 points, since 3*37=111 you pay for 3 wardens you bring (dhows cost even more, but that costs you an upgrade). I'd say it's an ok price for a 6 launchbay ship. Escorts are not always useful though, so it would be nice if not bringing them was an option. I've played quite a few games with Custodian + dhows + protector + emissary with earth caste custodian, worked well most of the time.

Currently those wardens don't do enough to be of any worth at the moment, they're great as bait and contribute little else. Sure it's a 6 launch bay ship, that would be nothing if every other ship got it's normal number of squadrons. dictator should get 4, Mars should get 4, emperor gets 8, orks get any where up to 4 per launch bay, Dospoiler should get 8, styx should 6, etc

Why does the Custodian get to be a special snow flake? if it followed the logic of how they implemented every other battleship it wouldn't be in the position it is now.

I said it before, their over priced for what they do. if they costed less, it would show how broken the water caste call in is, how broken their boarding capability/protection is and just how must have the dhow upgrade is.

Stealth alloy is completely fine with me, it's easily countered by the IN because of their superior detection range, eldar have their shenanigans and orks can rolf train over them.

Last edited by Aquilar on 06 October 2016, 01:04, edited 1 time in total.

Given that you can launch fighters and then launch bombers with all the fighters still out - unlike in the tabletop game, where the number of attack craft couldn't exceed the number of launch bays - I think it's fine that ships only have half their launch bays. I suspect that decision was made because it would have been difficult to allow split launches (not sure if the devs commented on that before).

In tabletop, only battleships had assault boats, and Tau Emissary launch bays only got fighters. This isn't tabletop, though, and balance shouldn't be sacrificed to keep ship stats exactly the same.

That being said, the Protector (and maybe Emissary) could probably be dropped to one launch bay, and the Custodian dropped to three. That wouldn't handicap those ships too much, in my opinion; all are quite powerful. If that happened, however, Mantas should get an extra hit point (or have the shield upgrade given back), since they are supposed to be resilient ordnance. The change would probably even work with the current matrix of Tau upgrades, although I would support removing the Dhow gravhook upgrade and replacing it with either improved torpedo speed or the launch bay cooldown upgrade.

Having used dhows several times with the Water caste favor, I don't think they really add that much to the battle. They're more durable than Wardens, yes, but have nowhere near the firepower. If, however, the dhow summon were removed from the Water caste favor, I'd support replacing it with a temporary (5-10 seconds) boost to detection range (+5k seems reasonable, since this about equals the range of beacons, but would still allow escape via running silent/kiting).

I agree that dhows would be more thematically fitting if carried to battle by a Nicassar caravan.

After using Demiurg ships in several battles, I think they're pretty reasonable, but that removing the auto-disengage at 30% hitpoints would make them a little too good. Maybe mercenary ships could have a lower chance to run when escorts are destroyed, given that there is no way to stop them warping out; this makes their behavior a little too random in my opinion.

Little Green Mensch wrote:That being said, the Protector (and maybe Emissary) could probably be dropped to one launch bay, and the Custodian dropped to three. That wouldn't handicap those ships too much, in my opinion; all are quite powerful. If that happened, however, Mantas should get an extra hit point (or have the shield upgrade given back), since they are supposed to be resilient ordnance. The change would probably even work with the current matrix of Tau upgrades, although I would support removing the Dhow gravhook upgrade and replacing it with either improved torpedo speed or the launch bay cooldown upgrade.

Having used dhows several times with the Water caste favor, I don't think they really add that much to the battle. They're more durable than Wardens, yes, but have nowhere near the firepower. If, however, the dhow summon were removed from the Water caste favor, I'd support replacing it with a temporary (5-10 seconds) boost to detection range (+5k seems reasonable, since this about equals the range of beacons, but would still allow escape via running silent/kiting).

I agree that dhows would be more thematically fitting if carried to battle by a Nicassar caravan.

After using Demiurg ships in several battles, I think they're pretty reasonable, but that removing the auto-disengage at 30% hitpoints would make them a little too good. Maybe mercenary ships could have a lower chance to run when escorts are destroyed, given that there is no way to stop them warping out; this makes their behavior a little too random in my opinion.

I definitely agree on giving water caste something other than a call in for a ship that has no stated jump drive, Detection is definitely an option.

The Demiurg ships need looking at, it's annoying that all an opponent needs to do to guarantee them off the field it is to crew panic them.

Is it really that difficult to actually log into the game ant test? Why are you arguing balance if you're not playing it? No, fire caste does not start fires or give troop value through manta boardings.

As for reducing Tau launchbay count - I can only see it along with a massive point cost drop, and not really necessary. Currently Tau ships are priced pretty well imo, protector would be worse than missile emissary with 1 LB.

As for Custodian and gravihooks - I agree that wardens are not pulling their weight (just as most of 100 hp combat escorts), but with dhows it's pretty decent. I'd like to see an option not to attach any escorts as I said as well as +100 hp to wardens, they'd become fairly viable at 200 hp (water caste call in changed to wardens too). Dhow upgrade is the only way to have them in the game atm, so I don't see it going away any time soon.

Demiurg are only decent when you get them - they're too weak compared to fully upgraded ships in latgame fleet. They're also way too expensive to upgrade in ranked for what they do (along with kroot spheres). They need a way to counter insubordination (upgrade, favour, skill, whatever) and they need to cost far less renown to upgrade imo. You can counter insubordination by using MWJ ASAP atm but it's kinda silly.

MadDemiurg wrote:As for reducing Tau launchbay count - I can only see it along with a massive point cost drop, and not really necessary. Currently Tau ships are priced pretty well imo, protector would be worse than missile emissary with 1 LB.

I don't think the protector would be worse, in exchange for losing a bay they could buff the crit rate on the prow railguns and make the two versions more distinct from one another, because really there is only one choice.

MadDemiurg wrote:As for Custodian and gravihooks - I agree that wardens are not pulling their weight (just as most of 100 hp combat escorts), but with dhows it's pretty decent. I'd like to see an option not to attach any escorts as I said as well as +100 hp to wardens, they'd become fairly viable at 200 hp (water caste call in changed to wardens too). Dhow upgrade is the only way to have them in the game atm, so I don't see it going away any time soon.

Fair, but I still rather see the dhow upgrade just go until they add either the Rig or the Caravan.

MadDemiurg wrote:Demiurg are only decent when you get them - they're too weak compared to fully upgraded ships in latgame fleet. They're also way too expensive to upgrade in ranked for what they do (along with kroot spheres). They need a way to counter insubordination (upgrade, favour, skill, whatever) and they need to cost far less renown to upgrade imo. You can counter insubordination by using MWJ ASAP atm but it's kinda silly.

That's a question for the developers to resolve, because I don't really like using any of the auxiliaries, I would have preferred some made up battlecruisers instead.

MadDemiurg wrote:As for reducing Tau launchbay count - I can only see it along with a massive point cost drop, and not really necessary. Currently Tau ships are priced pretty well imo, protector would be worse than missile emissary with 1 LB.

I think that's mainly because the Emissary class has heavier railguns than the Protector. Dropping a launch bay could be balanced with either a cost cut or kitting them out with bigger guns (which would admittedly also lead to kvetching about balance). I'd say the most important thing would be bumping Manta survivability if there were a launch bay drop, so that some would still get through.

I'm inclined to agree that Tau are more or less balanced as is, but a lot of folks I've played against feel that the Tau are too strong, and that Demiurg are especially overpowered. The combination of adaptive deflectors, prow weapons, and a bunch of ordnance can be hard to deal with. Having been on both sides of Imperial Navy vs. Tau battles, I have had a markedly easier time with Tau, but that may be because they fit my play style significantly better.

MadDemiurg wrote:As for Custodian and gravihooks - I agree that Wardens are not pulling their weight (just as most of 100 hp combat escorts), but with dhows it's pretty decent. I'd like to see an option not to attach any escorts as I said as well as +100 hp to wardens, they'd become fairly viable at 200 hp (Water caste call in changed to Wardens too). Dhow upgrade is the only way to have them in the game atm, so I don't see it going away any time soon.

Yeah, they're not going to pull the Dhow upgrade unless there's another way to bring them. Giving (admittedly hypothetical) Nicassar caravans the ability to take crew, and a lack of the Mercenaries trait (they're more integrated into the Tau empire, as I recall) would make them more compelling as auxiliary choices. Don't know if the devs are going to be able to get another Tau ship into the game, since they're probably already working on Tyranids or Necrons.

I agree that Wardens would be loads better at 200 hit points, as would all the 100 hit point escorts. The heavier escorts still die quite easily to ramming and boarding, especially since most people focus on managing their cruisers.

MadDemiurg wrote:Demiurg are only decent when you get them - they're too weak compared to fully upgraded ships in latgame fleet. They're also way too expensive to upgrade in ranked for what they do (along with Kroot spheres). They need a way to counter insubordination (upgrade, favour, skill, whatever) and they need to cost far less renown to upgrade imo. You can counter insubordination by using MWJ ASAP atm but it's kinda silly.

I only recently leveled my Tau admiral to 8, so I can only speculate about the Stronghold's lack of staying power against level 10 ships. Hadn't thought about the micro warp jump as a counter for insubordination, but I suppose that'd work well enough.